Mozart's Women

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Mozart's Women Page 27

by Glover, Jane


  As Michael Kelly had discovered on that quayside in Livorno, Nancy was lively, mischievous and extremely alert (‘making observations’), missing nothing. She was comfortably confident in all company, including the most exalted. Kelly describes an incident at Joseph II’s summer palace at Laxemburg, where he and Nancy were following a hunting expedition in one of the Emperor’s carriages; when Joseph II himself rode up and asked if he could do anything for them, Nancy ‘with her peculiar characteristic bluntness’ asked for a glass of water (which was of course forthcoming).53 But above all, she was a steadfast and loyal friend, full of compassion, common sense and extreme generosity. Kelly reports how his own single experiment at gambling ended in disaster, and at the end of the evening he owed 20 zecchinos to ‘a gallant English colonel’:

  In the morning, Nancy Storace called on me – ‘So, Sir,’ said she, ‘I hear you were gambling last night, and not only lost all the money you had about you, but are still in debt – such debts ought not to be left unsatisfied a moment; you may one day or other go to England and, should the transaction of your playing for more money than you possessed become known among Englishmen, it might give you a character which I know you do not deserve; it must be settled directly.’ She instantly produced the money, and made me go and discharge the obligation. Such an act of well-timed disinterested friendship was noble, and never forgotten by me.54

  All these characteristics and qualities were topped by a compelling stage presence, of, clearly, an alluring physicality. Count Zinzendorf may not have had a discerning ear, but his eye was always appreciative, and he more than admired Nancy’s ‘pretty figure, voluptuous, beautiful eyes, white neck, fresh mouth, beautiful skin, the naivety and the petulance of a child’. And, as she recovered at last from the physical and mental bruising of her marriage, Nancy became increasingly attached to her frequent on-stage partner, Francesco Benucci. By the end of 1786 their liaison was more than professional. In 1787 she finally returned to London, and she secured an invitation for Benucci to visit her there two years later.

  Mozart too was delighted with Nancy Storace, whom he welcomed fondly into his closest circle. Before she left for London, she gave a farewell concert at the Burgtheater, and it was for this occasion that Mozart wrote a scena for her, ‘Ch’io mi scordi di te’, K505, with its tender, valedictory text (‘I will never forget you’). For good measure he wrote a solo piano part in addition to the orchestral accompaniment, and so appeared with her at her final performance in Vienna. When he entered this work into his catalogue, he proudly added, ‘for Mademoiselle Storace and me’. Nancy and her mother, together with Michael Kelly and the young Thomas Attwood (Mozart’s pupil) returned together to England, passing through Salzburg on their way; and Wolfgang sent them to Leopold, asking his father to show them round the town. Leopold, with a not altogether good grace, duly obliged.

  DA PONTE’S ELOQUENCE had persuaded the Court censors to pass the sequel to Il barbiere di Siviglia as an entertainment, and an extremely familiar and popular cast had been assembled to perform it. But after that, nothing about Le nozze di Figaro was predictable. Da Ponte and Mozart relished the distinguished qualities of their cast, both collectively and individually; they mined the rich seam of social comment in Beaumarchais’ play; they applied their own particular geniuses to their collaboration; and they produced a work whose premiere, on 1 May 1786, has to have been one of the most important nights in the entire history of opera.

  From the very first bars of the overture, it was clear that something was different. Rather than gather the audience’s attention in the normal way with a forthright and resounding opening, Mozart instead began with a low, conspiratorial murmur in the strings and bassoons, compelling the public to listen in an altogether new way. Surprise after shocking surprise continued when the curtain went up. First it revealed a barely furnished room (‘Camera non affatto ammobiliata’), in which Susanna and Figaro, the bride and groom, were singing a duet, but, initially at least, paying not the slightest attention to each other. At the revelation that Count Almaviva had Susanna too in his sights, Figaro’s revolutionary energy was immediately unleashed in an aria which began as a controlled minuet but repeatedly collapsed into unruly bursts of rage. The audience would have been struck by the contempt with which Figaro deployed an insolent diminutive for his master (‘Se vuol ballare, signor Contino’ – a subtlety entirely Da Ponte’s, as he translated Beaumarchais’ ‘Puis dansez, Monsignor’). The elderly Marcellina and her lawyer Bartolo discussed a contract designed to entrap Figaro into paying her money or marrying her. Susanna and Marcellina exchanged ferocious insults (a development, certainly, of those exchanged by Mesdames Herz and Silberklang in Der Schauspieldirektor). A young page boy, Cherubino, confessed his utterly bewildered adolescent obsession with women, and then had to hide in a chair from the Count, in a scene bursting as much with danger as it was with hilarity. When he was nevertheless discovered, having now overheard the Count’s clumsy advances to Susanna, Cherubino was summarily ordered to join the Count’s regiment; and this astonishing first act closed with a blazing aria for Figaro (‘Non più andrai’) in which he teased the poor page about his imminent exchange of courtly elegance and frippery for the perilous realities of military life. Even at the first rehearsal of this aria, Benucci’s mighty performance of it had elicited stupendous applause from his colleagues. At the fall of the curtain on 1 May 1786, the audience must have felt truly swept away by the sensational novelty of the journey they were now travelling.

  And so it continued. The young Countess was discovered in tears, sorrowfully confronting her failed marriage. Susanna and Figaro outlined a plot publicly to expose her husband’s infidelities, and in desperation she agreed to go along with it. Young Cherubino, besotted with the beautiful Countess as with all women, sang her a love song of his own composition, and was briefly dressed up as a girl by a now nervously playful Countess and her fun-loving maid. As Cherubino’s infatuation with the Countess grew, the arrival of the Count again injected real danger into the scene: Cherubino was bundled into an ante-room, and the Count and Countess had an altogether ugly argument, indicating the cruel depths to which their marriage had sunk. Susanna’s quick thinking temporarily rescued the situation, to the total mystification of the Count, and indeed the Countess. But the arrival of a drunken gardener (who had witnessed Cherubino’s escape), followed by Marcellina and her supporters demanding that Figaro honour his contract, brought the act to a brilliant conclusion of total disarray, domestic, public and legal.

  As the opera progressed, Count Almaviva was seen in all his ruthlessness, continuing his attempted seduction of Susanna, but expressing in the strongest possible language his hatred of his servant Figaro for enjoying pleasures he himself could not. Susanna somehow produced the money Figaro owed Marcellina, and brought it to relieve him of his legal obligation (true echoes here of Nancy Storace’s bailing out Michael Kelly), but interrupted an incredibly touching scene in which it had been discovered that Marcellina and Bartolo were in fact Figaro’s long-lost parents. The Countess and Susanna devised a letter intended to trap the Count, and during the wedding celebrations the Count duly took the bait. The gardener’s young daughter, another passing conquest of the Count, was inveigled into carrying a message back to Susanna, but bungled it. Figaro, not yet knowing the full details of Susanna’s plan, now in full swing, suffered almost violent jealousy, and became, along with everyone else, involved in a nocturnal tangle of mistaken identities, the Countess and Susanna having now exchanged clothes. As the Count discovered that the woman he had thought was Susanna was in fact his wife, he fell to his knees in front of his entire household, and begged her to forgive him. When she did, everybody else slowly accepted their uneasy truce, and life on the estate resumed; but the lives of them all had been utterly changed by the events of the mad day (the ‘folle journée’ of Beaumarchais’ title).

  And that original audience, too, should have felt utterly changed by their experience. They
had been entertained by theatrical antics and beguiled by incomparable music; but they had also been shocked, in the same way perhaps as future audiences would be at the first performances of Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps, or John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger. They were left not just with the memory of strong music and stirring performances; they should have felt profoundly uncomfortable and in a way guilty. It had been a damning indictment of their own society, which Mozart and Da Ponte had exposed in the most glaring of arc-lights. And what was especially remarkable was that this essentially murky tale of domestic mayhem, for all that it touched on much wider, universal issues, was told by Mozart and Da Ponte with the greatest sympathy for the plight of women. Both men, utterly devoted to the opposite sex and as appreciative as anyone of their charms, firmly took the side of the Countess and Susanna, and even of Marcellina, whom they transformed from an almost stereotypical harridan at the beginning of the opera to a completely sympathetic mother at its end, strong, intelligent and supportive of her former adversary. ‘Ogni donna è portata alla difesa del suo povero sesso,’ she declares in the final act (Every woman comes to the defence of her own mistreated sex). All the male characters are unquestionably well drawn, especially of course Figaro himself, with all his attractiveness, warmth, vulnerability and dynamism; the ruthless Count; and even young Cherubino, whose enigmatic songs and desperate escapades reveal his struggle with the realities of adolescence. But it is Susanna and the Countess who effectively carry the opera. This sympathy for women was not a new departure for Mozart; but it was brought to a new level of relevance in Figaro, and was to shine too through both his next collaborations with the brilliant Da Ponte.

  Susanna can be seen, in fact, as Mozart’s perfect woman. Bright, quick, loyal and adorable, she is a superb friend to her beloved Figaro, to her Countess, and also to Cherubino. One of the longest and most rewarding roles in the soprano repertoire, Susanna leads (both musically and dramatically) every scene she is in. In the opening duets with Figaro, she is immediately established as being excited, a little vain (with her wedding hat), besotted with her Figaro, and extremely astute: she has worked out the full implications of the Count’s choice of room for them (for his own easy access), and has gently but firmly to spell it out to Figaro. She is reluctant to engage in an exchange of insults with Marcellina; but the stream of bitchy and demeaning abuse from her menopausal adversary eventually provokes her, and she easily gets the upper hand. And, as in the Schauspieldirektor trio, Mozart’s own glee at the spectacle of a scene so potentially embarrassing is nonetheless delivered with a perfect lightness of touch, diluting therefore the cruelties of Da Ponte’s text. Susanna is playfully firm with young Cherubino, resolute in her rejection of the Count’s advances (‘Dritti non prendo’ – I don’t want your rights – she boldly declares); and she even manages to salvage the appalling situation of Cherubino’s being discovered hiding in a chair, by pointing out that the page has overheard all his crude suggestions to her.

  When Susanna is with the Countess, the two women talk almost as equals, paradoxically discussing the failure of one marriage just as another is about to begin. Having, with Figaro, informed the Countess of the complicated plan designed to effect the Count’s downfall, Susanna then, in playful mood, encourages the Countess to prepare for part of it (to send Cherubino, disguised as a girl, into the garden at night as a decoy) by dressing the page in women’s clothes. And perhaps this stratagem held fond memories for Nancy Storace, as she recalled her first encounter with the long-haired teenager Michael Kelly in Livorno, when she mistook him for a girl: certainly her dressing-up aria, ‘Venite inginocchiatevi’, bubbles with youthful glee and laughter. It is Susanna’s quick thinking that saves the Countess’s own face, to the great bafflement of the Count, and in the finale to Act II Susanna and the Countess largely sing together in thirds (and even once in unison), utterly united against the hostile aggression of her Almaviva.

  As Figaro’s plan goes into operation, Susanna is essential to it. She makes her assignation with the Count, though not without some tough, ironic spirit as she endures his jibes. (He encourages her to use the Countess’s headache remedy herself, to which she counters, ‘Questi non son mali da donne triviale’ – Girls of my class don’t have these ailments – a reply worthy of Figaro himself.) As the Count begins his honeyed seduction of her (‘Crudel, perche finora / Farmi languir così?’ – Cruel one, why have you treated me so badly?) in A minor, she cannot bring herself to give in to it, and repeatedly gives the wrong answers to his little questions. But when she eventually gets it right, the music moves from the minor into A major (Mozart’s key of seduction) for the Count’s new confidence, over which Susanna mutters apologetically her miserable aside, ‘Scusatemi se mento / Voi ch’intendete amor’ (You who truly love, forgive my deception).

  When, in true Storace fashion, Susanna brings in the money to absolve Figaro from his debt, she discovers him embracing Marcellina (for her supposed rival is, after all, his mother), and, after the manner of Blonde, she hits him. But as everything is explained to her, she too joins in the real joy of the new situation; the chemistry is now shifted, and Susanna and Figaro, Marcellina and Bartolo join together as a family and prepare for their double wedding. It is the Countess who now takes the lead as she and Susanna compose their letter to the Count, arranging the nocturnal assignation; and in the final act, Susanna’s brief doubt of Figaro’s own trust in her only makes their final understanding all the happier.

  But the most miraculous moment for her comes almost at the end of the opera, in her aria ‘Deh, vieni e non tardar’. She knows at this stage that Figaro has begun to entertain totally unjustified suspicions of her own fidelity; and as she continues to carry out the plan of deceiving the Count, she gently turns the tables on Figaro too. Sitting apparently alone in the garden at night, awaiting a supposed assignation with the Count but knowing she is observed by the hidden Figaro, she sings a tender, quiet aria anticipating the joys of love. But what begins as play-acting, with a slightly exaggerated vocal line (‘godrò senza affanno’ – I shall enjoy unreservedly) and giggling string punctuations, in fact becomes utterly sincere, as the profound truth and beauty of her emotions become real. The beguiling and sweet simplicity of her vocal line, gently supported in Mozart’s inimitable fashion by a flute, an oboe and a bassoon which weave their own radiant lines through Susanna’s, make this a moment of true theatrical perfection. (It is surely significant that these three solo instruments featured too in the sublime ‘Et incarnatus est’ that Mozart wrote for his Constanze, in their C minor Mass.) There is therefore a double dramatic irony: Susanna’s world does indeed stop (‘il mondo tace’), and her soul is refreshed (‘il cor ristaura’) as she sings these very words. At the end of the opera, the audience has the impression that, whatever else has happened, the marriage between Figaro and Susanna will be long, happy, and never dull. It is tempting to infer from Figaro some understanding of the relationship between Storace and Benucci; and perhaps too of the marriage of Wolfgang and Constanze.

  And on the other side of the female coin there is the equally compelling portrait of the Countess, the lonely, restrained, courageous sufferer throughout most of the opera. Her opening soliloquy (‘Porgi amor qualche ristoro’) is an unbearable contemplation of her failing marriage. Changing the mood, pace and colour of the opera at the beginning of Act II, after the high activity of Act I, Mozart gives her an instrumental introduction to her aria, almost in the manner of a concerto. Clarinets, bassoons and horns supply sombre warmth, and set up the controlled vocal sorrow of what follows, rather like Constanze’s ‘Traurigkeit’. (Luisa Laschi too must have possessed a wonderful ability to spin a cantabile line, in the way Mozart so loved.) At the word ‘sospir’ (sighing), Mozart injects real pathos by giving the bassoon a G flat appoggiatura within an F minor chord, in the same way that he had, but in an exaggerated mood, on the words ‘Aber, ach’ for Madame Silberklang’s ‘Bester Jüngling’ in Der Schauspieldirektor. Agai
n as he had in ‘Traurigkeit’, Mozart delays the perfect cadence by using pauses and interrupted cadences; and then, having found the home key, gives the Countess the simplest and saddest of codas. After this demanding but brief aria (it is only 51 bars long), the audience is thoroughly supportive of a woman so tellingly introduced.

  Throughout the dressing of Cherubino as a girl, the Countess is nervous, but she enjoys it too. This, and her touched reaction to his childlike distress, show her still to be desperate for both fun and affection; her brutal confrontations with her husband are cruel portrayals of broken communication. She publicly endures every revelation of the Count’s philandering with icy dignity, and, in the final scene, quietly forgives him yet again, determined perhaps to give their marriage one last shot. But she has been fortified to do this by a quite extraordinary transformation in her, which took place in her third-act soliloquy. It is a scene which does not exist in Beaumarchais’ play, and so was added by Da Ponte and Mozart; but even Da Ponte’s text, brilliant and multilayered as it is, does not indicate the full variety and perspicacity of Mozart’s interpretation of it. Unlike every other aria in the opera, this soliloquy begins with the Countess in one mood, and ends with her in quite another; Mozart has smashed yet another mould.

 

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